


Play Like a Girl

by DrummerGirl231



Category: DuckTales (Cartoon 2017)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Childhood Trauma, Family Fluff, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Identity Issues, Light Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-14
Updated: 2019-10-14
Packaged: 2020-12-15 22:40:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21025901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DrummerGirl231/pseuds/DrummerGirl231
Summary: Five-year-olds Donald and Della arrive to live at McDuck Manor, and it doesn't take long before Scrooge learns they come from a very different home than the one he intends to provide.





	Play Like a Girl

**Author's Note:**

> This story delves deep into DG headcanon territory. It is a prequel to "Peace and Quiet," and a sequel set directly after "What Hortense and Quackmore Wanted."

“Livin’ in a castle, livin’ in a castle, livin’ in a cassooooolle…” Della sang her improvised ditty and kicked her feet happily as she had her teddy bear do a little dance on the padded bar of her car seat.

“It’s really more of a mansion than a castle,” Scrooge said.

“Oh,” Della stopped kicking her feet for a moment before she began to sing a revised verse. “Livin’ in a mansion, livin’ in a manshuuuuun…”

Scrooge rolled his eyes. _She’s not going to narrate her entire life in song form, is she?_

Meanwhile, little Donald sat still in his car seat tightly clutching his own teddy bear. His wide eyes stared out the window at the exterior of McDuck Manor as Duckworth came to a complete stop at the front steps. He hadn’t said or sung a word the entire drive – which wasn’t a terribly long drive – but compared to Della, who'd hardly paused to take a breath since they left their grandmother’s driveway…

“Unca Scrooge, I can’t undo my buckle! Can you help me with it, pleeease?”

_At least she’s got her manners._ Scrooge unlatched the padded bar and raised it over her head before unbuckling her harness. “There ye are. D’ye need help too, Lad?”

Donald raised his fist and bobbed it up and down.

“That means ‘yes!’” Della explained.

Scrooge knew that… in fact, “yes,” and “no,” were the only words in sign language he knew. Though why there needed to be signs for those two words when nodding or shaking one’s head would suffice, he had no idea. And why Donald felt he couldn’t just say “yes,” or “no…” _Come to think of it, I do know why,_ he realized. 

When he arrived at the funeral the day before, Della surprised him by jumping into his arms with an inappropriately cheerful, “Yaaayy, Unca Scrooge is here!” but Donald held his grandmother’s hand and only waved when his grandmother told him to say “Hi.”

“Come now, Laddie, surely you can say ‘Hello?’” Scrooge had said.

But Donald slipped his hand out of his grandmother’s to sign something.

“He says ‘Mum wouldn’t like it,’” Della had translated.

He’d tried to explain to him that his mother couldn’t hear him now if he spoke, but he realized as he unbuckled Donald’s harness whatever kept him from speaking must have gone far deeper than just not grasping the concept of death.

Duckworth opened the door for Scrooge and he stepped out.

“Alright, come along kids, out ye get.”

Donald and Della climbed out of their car seats and hopped down onto the paved driveway. Their heads both tilted back in unison as they gazed up at the mansion towering over them. Duckworth got their bags from the trunk and Scrooge led them inside. 

Despite the twins having seen the mansion before, they still stared at the vast foyer around them with wide eyes, now taking it in as their home for the first time.

“There are certain rules I expect you to adhere to now ye’re here,” he began. “Rule number one: my space is _my_ space. Stay out of my study, stay out of my washroom – you have your own – and stay out of my bedroom, unless there’s an absolute emergency. Understand?”

“Okay, Unca Scrooge,” Della said while Donald brought his hand up to his face and pointed upward with the back of his hand facing Scrooge. 

“Rule two – defer to Duckworth for all subsequent rules.”

“Huh?” Della tilted her head.

“Duckworth will tell you the rest of the rules. He’ll also be showing you to your room. Good day,” he touched the brim of his hat and turned to head up the stairs.

“But wait! Where are you going?” Della scurried after him.

“To my study. I have work to do.”

“But it’s Sunday! People don’t work on Sundays, silly!”

“And those people aren’t the richest duck in the world, now are they?

“Boy… being rich sounds awful…” she said in amazement.

Scrooge’s brow twitched at this and he turned over his shoulder. “Working hard and being rich is what’s gonna pay for the clothes on your backs and the food on your plates for the next thirteen years! Or would ye rather live in a box?”

Both children flinched at his tone. Donald stared at the floor with his shoulders scrunched up to his ears and his arms wrapped around his bear, and Della shook her head. 

“No, Unca Scrooge,” she said. 

She seemed to have deflated from her normally happy-go-lucky and over-enthusiastic self, and Scrooge didn’t appreciate the guilt trip, unintentional or not.

He turned once more to head up the stairs with a huff. “Duckworth will show you to your room,” he repeated. “If ye don’t like the new paint smell, he can put you up in a guest room until your room airs out.”

Scrooge hadn’t been in his study more than ten minutes before Duckworth entered with an update. 

“I’ve put the urchins in a guest room, Sir.”

“Hmph… didnae like the smell, did they?”

“On the contrary, Sir… the girl liked it so much she inhaled deeply. Then the boy ran out when he saw a crane fly on the wall that had gotten in through the open window. And then the girl said her head felt ‘funny.’”

“Agh jings, those kids…” he groaned. 

“I placed their bags in the guest room and let them carry as many of their toys as they could in one trip to have in the room with them. It should keep them occupied until dinner, at least.”

“Very good, Duckworth. Thank you,” he dismissed him.

Scrooge managed to get another half-hour of work in before he thought he heard the small voice of a child just outside his door. He paused and listened for nearly a minute, but heard nothing but a ticking clock. _I cannae be losing my mind already,_ he thought. But a few minutes later, he heard it again. He pushed himself up from his desk with a groan and opened the door, where he saw the twins lying side-by-side on their stomachs, propped up on their elbows and coloring puppies and kittens in a coloring book – Donald with his right hand and Della with her left, though she quickly moved the crayon to her right hand.

“What are ye doing here?”

“Waiting for you to be done working,” Della said.

“Didnae I tell you te stay away from my study?”

“Nooo, you said to stay _out_ of your study. We _are_ out of it,” she said, and Donald nodded in agreement.

Scrooge was about to say “Ye’re out of it, alright, ye little paint-sniffer,” when he realized he had indeed only told them to stay out of his study. _Even on paint fumes, she’s a sharp little thing,_ he thought. 

Nonetheless, he shook his head. “I can’t get my work done with you two loitering just outside the door.”

“We’re not loitering; we’re coloring! And we missed you, Unca Scrooge!”

_“Missed_ me? Wha – how can –” he stammered. “Ye hardly know me and ye saw me less than an hour ago! Ye can’t miss me!”

“Yeah-huh!”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yeah-huh!”

“Nuh… Wait, what am I doing, arguing with a child?” he leaned over to pick up their crayons and coloring book. 

Maybe he’d knelt too quickly or picked up their things with too much force, but the children gasped and sat up on their knees, leaning towards each other as they brought their arms up to shield their faces. This behavior startled Scrooge, almost as much as he’d startled them. All he was going to do was hand them their things and shoo them down the hall. He stood there, holding out their coloring book and crayons to them, but their eyes were tightly shut for what seemed like an awkward eternity, though it was probably just a few seconds. At last, Della opened one of her eyes and then the other, and Donald did, too, when he felt Della lower her arms and reach to take their things back from Scrooge. 

Several questions came to Scrooge’s mind but got lost somewhere on the way to his mouth. _What are ye flinching like that for? Did ye think I was gonna hit you or throw these things?_ But even without asking, he knew that’s what they thought, which raised the question, _Why?_ And at last, the question he so dreaded to ask, he had to push it out of his mind as soon as it formed: _Is that how my sister treated you?_

_No, they just scare easy,_ he told himself. _Kids are afraid of all kinds of things and people they don’t need te be afraid of. They flinched because I’m practically a stranger. They just don’t know me… that’s all that was. Curse me kilts, why should I feel guilty for startling them when I didn’t do anything worth getting worked up about?_

Della said a quiet, “Thank you,” when she took their things back and Donald touched the tips of his fingers to his chin with his hand flat and then tilted his hand toward Scrooge.

“Ye’re welcome… just… run along te the guest room now, and either Duckworth or I will come an’ fetch ye when your dinner’s ready.”

“But waiting in there is boring, Unca Scrooge,” Della said.

“Then go play outside!”

The twins’ gasped, but this time their faces lit up. 

“Even me?” Della asked. “I get to play outside, too?”

“What? Yes, of course, both of you! Run along and play until dinner,” he waved them off and returned to his office.

A little after six o’clock, there was a knock at his office door. 

“Dinner is served, Sir,” Duckworth said, as he usually did at six o’clock. 

Scrooge glanced at the clock and back at Duckworth, and he noticed he was running a tad behind his usual schedule and was looking to the side as though he had something else he needed to say but didn’t want to.

“Yes? What is it?”

“The children are not in the guest room, Sir,” he said. “I checked all the other rooms in the corridor, but –”

Scrooge set his pen on the desk and adjusted his spectacles. “I sent them outside to play when they came to chat and color outside my study,” he eased his butler’s conscience and rose to his feet. “I’ll go an’ fetch them and we’ll be in the dining room shortly. Thank you, Duckworth.” 

But when Scrooge walked out into the backyard, the children were nowhere to be seen. _Agh, curse me kilts, ye’d think they’d have the decency to play near the door so I didnae hafte hunt them down…_ he grumbled in his mind. 

“Oi! Kids!” he called, crossing his lawn and looking to the left and right, heading for the trees and bushes at the edge of the yard. “Dinner’s on the table!” But still, there was no reply. He grew more annoyed as he checked behind a few shrubs. “If ye don’t come right now, ye won’t get any shortbread biscuits after dinner!” _If that doesnae work, a bird of prey must’ve swooped down on them,_ he told himself. 

But it didn’t work. And while he’d only been joking when he thought of a bird of prey flying off with them, an unwelcome flutter of anxiety stirred in his chest as he began to search more frantically. “Kids! Where are you? Your dinner’s getting cold!” Finally he could think of nothing else but to resort to using the most tried and true method of getting kids to do as they’re told: “I’m gonna give you until the count of three to show yourselves! One… two…” 

And to his relief, about thirty feet away, Donald stepped out from behind a bush. Scrooge let out a heavy sigh. 

“Lad! Ye need to answer when I call you! Where’s your sister?”

Donald glanced behind himself at the bush and then waved both his hands when Scrooge took a step nearer as though to stop Scrooge. His hands were absolutely filthy. He began to sign up a storm, but Scrooge couldn’t understand a word. 

“I don’t know sign language,” he said, coming closer. “But I do know you can speak. I heard you before, remember? Now just tell me what ye mean to tell me!” but Donald wouldn’t. “I’ll give you to the count of three to talk, then!” he said. “One…”

But at that moment, Della walked out from behind the bush, her eyes full of tears and her front covered in mud.

“Lass! What in the world happened to you?”

Her tiny bill trembled and she let out a slow whine that became a cry. “I’m soorrrryyy!” she sobbed. “I – I – didn’t mean to! It was – an – accident!” she was crying so hard she frequently paused to gasp for breath, and she crossed her muddy little arms over her bill to cover her face. 

Scrooge groaned. “Didn’t mean to do what? What happened?”

“I – I – I – was playing, and –” she paused to cry a bit more, “I got stuck! My dress – got – stuck!”

“It got caught on the bushes, then?” Scrooge tried to understand.

Della nodded with a high-pitched “Uh-huh…” and she fought to regain enough control to continue with her story. “And when I – I tried to get unstuck – my dress – ripped, and… I’m sorryyyy!” she cried harder than ever, and it was clear enough to Scrooge this weighed on her conscience so heavily that comfort was needed more than a scolding. 

“Alright, quit your fussing, it’s only a dress. It can be cleaned and mended. Are you hurt?”

She shook her head as she sobbed.

“So when your dress ripped ye fell into a mud puddle?” he guessed.

“Yes…” she whined while he stepped around her and sure enough, found a mud puddle, as well as a doll on the grass just inches from the mud. He recognized it as one of those Quacky Patch dolls that were all over the news a few Christmases ago because they were in such high demand. He picked it up and gave it a once-over.

“Looks like your doll made it through the ordeal unscathed,” he said. 

Della brought her arms away from her face and tried to get the dirt off her hands by rubbing them together before reaching for the doll. “Please don’t hurt her!” she begged. “We were playing house, and – and I was trying to protect her from a lava monster, and –”

_The plot thickens,_ Scrooge mused to himself. “What lava monster? Was Donald pretending to be the monster?”

“Nooo, Donald’s the daddy when we play house. The bush was the monster, and – and – we were fighting it to protect the baby,” she explained. “But then I fell in the lava…”

More than anything, Scrooge was impressed with Della’s version of “playing house.” She may cry at getting dirty, but she was a wee adventurer at heart, he could tell. 

“That’s quite the game of house,” he said, and he turned to Donald. “I wish when I was a lad and your aunt Tilly made me play house with her it was as exciting as all that. I’m a tad envious.” He knelt in front of Della and handed her “baby,” back to her. Her arms were still a bit muddy and he knew he or Duckworth might have to do some spot cleaning on the doll later, but it was only dirt. He observed the way she gently cradled the doll in her arms like it was a real baby. “See? Your baby’s just fine, and you’re fine. Now come along to dinner.”

But Della’s eyes welled up with tears once more and she started sobbing all over again. 

“Tatter me tartan, what now?” he said. 

“I’m sorrrryy!” she cried. 

“So ye said.”

“I’m sorry I’m – I’m bad at being a – a girl!” 

Donald approached and raised his arms to hug her, then saw how dirty his hands still were and tried wiping them on the grass. 

“Bad at being a girl?” Scrooge said. “What in blazes makes ye think that?”

Donald tapped his thumb to his chin twice with his hand open, and Scrooge didn’t know what that meant of course, but luckily for him Della was able to force herself to say, “Mummy,” between sobs.

“Your mummy told you ye’re a bad girl?”

“She – she says – little girls are s’posed to be good, and – and sit still and not get dirty or climb trees, but – but I like digging and climbing! And I’m really bad at sitting still… I try really hard…” she sobbed. “Mummy got mad if I got dirty or ripped my dresses. She said I was worse than a boy! I’m sorry I’m bad at being a giiirrrrrl!”

So that’s what all the fuss was about… Hortense hadn’t moved on from those Victorian gender roles so prevalent in their upbringing and had been forcing her little girl to act like her idea of a little woman. But she was five… _five years old…_ how could anyone expect a five-year-old not to play and get dirty sometimes? Scrooge had been a parent no more than a few hours and he knew as much to know getting dirty was part of childhood. Quacky Patch Kids were dolls… little girls were not.

“D’ye want to know a secret?” he said.

Della sniffled and tried to quiet her sobbing a bit to hear him. 

“Yer mummy was wrong about you… you’re doing a great job at being a girl.”

Della sniffled as another tear escaped her eye. “Really?”

“Really. Playing outside isn’t just for little boys. It’s for all kids. And grown-ups. I still like to play outside, too. And even your mum liked to play outside back in the day. And sometimes, playing outside means getting dirty. Like this.” He reached down into the mud puddle, scooped up a bit with his fingers, and wiped it on his greatcoat. Donald and Della’s eyes nearly bulged out of their heads. “And that’s what washing machines and drycleaners are for,” he said. 

Donald turned to Della and twirled his right index finger by the side of his head, and Scrooge realized he understood more sign language than just “Yes,” and “No.”

“I’m not crazy, ye wee rascal!”

Donald gripped his right hand in his left, surprised to have been caught, and Della giggled through her tears.

“Lass, little girls are supposed to get their dresses dirty sometimes. And they can run and climb and dig and be loud. That’s the stuff of childhood. Don’t waste your childhood sitting still and staying clean, alright?”

“Okay, Unca Scrooge,” and her smile returned as she wiped a tear from her cheek.

“Atta Lass,” he reached up with his clean hand to rustle her hair. “And d’ye know how else I can tell ye’re being a girl the right way?”

“How?”

“Seeing how good of a mummy ye are to yer dolly,” he said. “Any little girl can give a dolly a bottle and put her to bed, but you? You fought a lava monster to protect your wee bairn!”

“Unca Scrooge, it’s just pretend…”

“Maybe, but you kids play the best game of pretend I’ve ever heard of. Now come along, before dinner gets cold.”

He led the kids to the back door and took off Della's shoes before going inside, then called for Duckworth.

“You rang, Sir?” Duckworth’s eyes traveled from Della’s filthy face and dress to Scrooge’s mud-smeared coat. “Shall I put dinner away for now and heat up the left-overs after their bath?” he said tiredly.

“Oh, I don’t think so… these wee warriors just saved a baby from a lava monster and have worked up quite the appetite! Some towels on this one’s chair should do,” he said with his hand on Della’s shoulder.

**Author's Note:**

> The "Aunt Tilly," Scrooge refers to is of course his sister Matilda.
> 
> DG Headcanons:
> 
> I feel like Scrooge raised Della in a home of true feminism... the kind that doesn't discourage women from being mothers, adventuring, and/or having careers... the kind that embraces all aspects of womanhood and girlhood, without sticking women and girls in boxes of Victorian gender roles or making them choose between their dreams. 
> 
> And after living with Hortense, who tried to make Della the golden child by having her be a performing doll, Della would have found so much freedom coming to live with her Uncle Scrooge, who taught her she could be a rascal and not be any less of a girl. He affirmed her adventuresome spirit and maternal instincts from the start. 
> 
> Nevertheless, Della struggled to break free of that perform-to-win-love mentality for years. "One day I'll catch that Ho-ho-hooligan and give Uncle Scrooge the best Christmas gift ever!" She tried for so long to win the approval from Scrooge she already had, and now does what she can to make sure her sons don't struggle with the same insecurities she did. "I will always believe you can do anything, but you never have to prove anything to me."


End file.
